Interpersonal Chapter 5

Silence

A final type of nonverbal behavior is silence, which can communicate powerful messages. "I'm not speaking to you" actually speaks volumes. We use silence to communicate different meanings. For instance, it can symbolize contentment when intimates are so comfortable they don't need to talk. Silence can also communicate awkwardness, as you know if you've ever had trouble keeping conversation going on a first date. In some cultures, including many Eastern ones, silence indicates respect and thoughtfulness.

Artifacts

Artifacts are personal objects we use to announce our identities and heritage and to personalize our environments. Many people use avatars to symbolize online identities. In face-to-face communication, we craft our image by our hairstyles, makeup, dress, and personal objects.

Interpret Others' Nonverbal Communication Tentatively

It's naive to think we can precisely decode something as complex, ambiguous, and personal as nonverbal communication. Because nonverbal communication is ambiguous and personal, we should not assume we can interpret it with absolute precision. Effective communicators qualify interpretations of nonverbal communication with awareness of personal and contextual factors.

Responsiveness

Key to responsiveness is immediacy, which is behavior that increases perceptions of closeness between communicators In face-to-face interaction, immediacy behaviors include smiling, making eye contact, head nodding, and attentive posture. Online, we may communicate responsiveness by using emoticons to convey feelings and by replying immediately to an instant message or to comments in a chat room

Types of Nonverbal Communication

We're now ready to explore the types of nonverbal behavior that we use each to establish relationships, regulate interaction, and express personal and cultural identity.

Chronemics

Chronemics refers to how we perceive and use time. In Western culture, there is a norm that important people with high status can keep others waiting. Conversely, people with low status are expected to be punctual.The length of time we spend with different people reflects our interpersonal priorities. When possible, we spend more time with people we like than with those we don't like or who bore us. In work settings, time is also spent with people considered more important.

Environmental Factors

Environmental factors are elements of settings that affect how we feel and act. For instance, we respond to architecture, colors, room design, temperature, sounds, smells, and lighting. Rooms with comfortable chairs invite relaxation, whereas rooms with stiff chairs induce formality. Dimly lit rooms can set a romantic mood, although dark rooms can be depressing. Amount of noise may also be associated with social status. Prisons, which have low social status, are relentlessly noisy, and economically disadvantaged citizens tend to live in the most degraded soundscapes.

Nonverbal Communication May Supplement or Replace Verbal Communication

First, nonverbal behaviors may repeat verbal messages Second, nonverbal behaviors may highlight verbal communication Third, we use nonverbal behavior to complement or add to words Fourth, nonverbal behaviors may contradict verbal messages Finally, we sometimes substitute nonverbal behaviors for verbal ones

Principles of Nonverbal Communication

Four principles enhance insight into how nonverbal communication influences meaning in human interaction.

Haptics

Haptics is the sense of touch. Many scholars believe that touching and being touched are essential to a healthy life Touching also communicates power and status. In general, parents touch sons less often and more roughly than they touch daughters. As adults, women tend to use touch to show liking and intimacy, whereas men are more likely than women to use touch to assert power and control. How things feel to us affects how we act.

Differences between verbal and nonverbal communication

Nonverbal Communication Tends to Be Perceived as More Believable Nonverbal Communication Is Multichanneled Nonverbal Communication Is Continuous

Liking

Nonverbal behaviors often are keen indicators of how positively or negatively we feel toward others. Smiles and friendly touching convey positive feelings, whereas frowns and belligerent postures express antagonism. More specific rules are instilled by particular speech communities. Masculine speech communities tend to emphasize emotional control and independence, so men are less likely than women to use nonverbal behaviors to reveal how they feel. Reflecting the values of feminine socialization, women, in general, sit closer to others, smile more, and engage in greater eye contact than men. Women also tend to be more nonverbally expressive of their emotions because that is encouraged in feminine speech communities.

Paralanguage

Paralanguage is communication that is vocal but does not use words. It includes sounds, such as murmurs and gasps, and vocal qualities, such as volume, pitch, and inflection. Paralanguage also includes accents, pronunciation, and the complexity of sentences. People with foreign accents often are falsely perceived as less intelligent than native speakers. Paralanguage also reflects cultural heritage and may signal that we are members of specific communication communities.

Proxemics and Personal Space

Proxemics refers to space and how we use it. Every culture has norms that prescribe how people should use space, how close people should be to one another, and how much space different people are entitled to have. In the United States, we generally interact with social acquaintances from a distance of 4 to 12 feet but are comfortable with 18 inches or less between ourselves and close friends and romantic partners. The amount of space with which people feel comfortable differs among cultures. The United States is an individualistic culture in which personal space, as well as personal rights, goals, and choices, is valued. In contrast, people in collectivist cultures place more emphasis on the group and community than individuals. Given this, it's not surprising that less personal space in homes, workplaces, and public areas is required in collectivist societies

Guidelines for Improving Nonverbal Communication

The following two guidelines should decrease the chance that you will misunderstand others' nonverbal behaviors or that others will misperceive yours.

Power

We use nonverbal behaviors to assert dominance and to negotiate for status and influence Men generally assume greater amounts of space than women and use greater volume and more forceful gestures to assert themselves People with power tend to touch those with less power Time is also linked to people's status. People who are considered important can keep others waiting. People who have power usually have more space than those who have little or no power.

Similarities between verbal and nonverbal communication

nonverbal communication is symbolic nonverbal communication is rule-guided nonverbal communication may be intentional or unintentional nonverbal communication reflects culture

Nonverbal Communication Often Establishes Relationship-Level Meanings

the content level of meaning is the literal message. The relationship level of meaning defines communicators' identities and relationships between them. Nonverbal communication often acts as "relationship language" that expresses the overall feeling of relationships

Monitor Your Nonverbal Communication

you can monitor your nonverbal actions so that you convey greater involvement and interest in conversations Have you set up your spaces so that they invite the kind of interaction you prefer, or are they arranged to interfere with good communication? Paying attention to nonverbal dimensions of your world can empower you to use them more effectively to achieve your interpersonal goals

Personal Qualifications

Generalizations about nonverbal behavior tell us only what is generally the case. They may not apply to particular individuals.Because nonverbal behaviors are ambiguous and vary among cultures and individuals, we need to be cautious about how we interpret others. A good practice is to rely on I language, not you language, which we discussed in Chapter 4. You language might lead us to inaccurately say of someone who doesn't look at us, "You're communicating lack of interest." A more responsible statement would use I language to say, "When you don't look at me, I feel you're not interested in what I'm saying." Using I language reminds us to take responsibility for our judgments and feelings. In addition, it reduces the likelihood of making others defensive by inaccurately interpreting their nonverbal behavior.

Kinesics

Kinesics refers to body position and body motions, including those of the face. Humans communicated by gesture long before they learned to communicate verbally Our faces are intricate messengers. Our eyes can shoot daggers of anger, issue challenges, or radiate feelings of love. Our eyes communicate some of the most important and complex messages about how we feel about others.

Nonverbal Communication May Regulate Interaction

More than verbal cues, nonverbal behaviors regulate the flow of communication between people Turn-taking in conversation usually is regulated nonverbally

Contextual Qualifications

Our nonverbal communication also reflects the settings we inhabit. Most people are more at ease on their own turf than on someone else's, so we tend to be friendlier and more outgoing in our homes than in business meetings and public places. We also dress according to context. Immediate physical setting is not the only context that affects nonverbal communication. As we have seen, all communication, including the nonverbal dimension, reflects the values and understandings of particular cultures. We are likely to misinterpret people from other cultures when we impose on them the norms and rules of our own. According to feminine speech communities, ongoing feedback is a way to signal interest, not necessarily approval. We can become more effective nonverbal communicators if we monitor our own nonverbal behaviors and qualify our interpretation of others by keeping personal and contextual considerations in mind.

Social Media and Nonverbal Communication

Perhaps the most obvious issue is that nonverbal communication is more restricted in digital and online communication than in f2f interaction. Words in an email or text message don't tell us whether the person who wrote them is serious, sarcastic, or playful. The need to signal others how to interpret our words and to understand how we should interpret their words compelled invention of emoticons. But emoticons aren't expressive enough for some people, which led to the development of stickers, which are cartoon-like icons that people send to replace text messages. First used in Japan, stickers are gaining popularity among Westerners, who find words and even emoticons insufficient for what they want to express. And stickers don't need translating when shared between users who have different languages. A second interesting facet of nonverbal communication in social media is the size of a person's electronic footprint. Some people update their Facebook pages at least daily and sometimes more often, whereas others update their Facebook pages infrequently. Some people comment on nearly everything posted by others, whereas other people comment more selectively. There is no research to tell us what it means when people have small or large electronic footprints, but the noticeable differences in how much space people take are striking. Electronic footprints don't go away just because we delete texts or photos, so you should exercise caution in what you post online and what text messages you send. Third, as we noted earlier in this chapter, digital communication can compete with, and sometimes interfere with, f2f communication. Do you send or check texts while talking with others f2f? (And don't think people don't notice just because you have eye contact while texting!) If so, does that convey the level of responsiveness you want to convey? Dual perspective might lead you to think about the person with whom you are in face-to-face contact. Is he or she someone who is as wired to social media as you? If not, you might want to focus on the f2f interaction.

Nonverbal Communication Reflects and Expresses Cultural Values

This implies that most nonverbal behavior is not instinctive but learned in the process of being socialized within a particular culture. In other cultures—called high-contact cultures—people are less territorial. United States affectionate touching between male friends is uncommon except during sports events. Patterns of eye contact also reflect cultural values. Cultural training also influences which emotions we express and how we express them- In Japan and many other Asian cultures, it is generally considered rude to express negative feelings toward others. In the United States, the display of negative feelings is less constrained. Cultures also differ in their orientations toward time. Some cultures have monochronic orientations toward time, whereas others have polychronic orientations. Most Western cultures are relatively monochronic, whereas many South American cultures are more polychronic. Monochronic cultures view time as a valuable commodity to be saved, scheduled, and carefully guarded. Within monochronic cultures, people do one thing at a time, and they value punctuality and efficiency. Thus, people are expected to be on time for appointments, work, and classes, and they are expected to complete work quickly In contrast, polychronic cultures take a more holistic, organic view of time. Members of these cultures assume that many things are happening simultaneously. Thus, punctuality is seldom stressed. Technology can alter our temporal rhythms and even our sense of time. The speed with which computers, phones, and tablets operate encourages us to expect things to happen at a rapid pace.

Physical Appearance

Western culture places an extremely high value on physical appearance. For this reason, in face-to-face interactions, most of us notice how others look, and we often base our initial evaluations of others on their appearance. The emphasis Western culture places on physical attractiveness and youthful appearance contributes to eating disorders, abuse of steroids and other drugs, and the popularity of cosmetic surgery. people who are above average in attractiveness are likely to make an average of 3% to 4% more than people who are below average in attractiveness. That could add up to well over $200,000 over the course of an average career. More attractive people are also more likely to be employed, obtain loan approvals, and negotiate loans with better terms. Currently, Western cultural ideals emphasize thinness and youth in women. By age 9, 50% to 80% of girls are trying to lose weight (Rhode, 2010). Seventy-five percent of American women say that their physical appearance is a major influence on their self-esteem, and a full 33% say it's more important than job performance or intelligence (Rhode, 2010). Current Western ideals for men emphasize buff, muscular bodies (Roosevelt, 2010). African Americans who embrace this value accept or prefer women who weigh more than the current ideal for Caucasians

Nonverbal Communication

all aspects of communication other than words includes not only gestures but also how we utter words: inflection, pauses, tone, volume, and accent also includes features of environments that affect interaction, personal objects such as jewelry and clothes, and physical appearance nonverbal behavior account for 65% to 93% of the total meaning of communication